


Unseen, and Seeing

by Rainah (RainahFiclets)



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Mythical Beings & Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 18:53:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11363508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainahFiclets/pseuds/Rainah
Summary: Humans are like candles, brief and fragile. So what makes Angelica take notice of this one? A boy burning with fever, a young man fighting in a war, a spirit who will not be conquered.





	Unseen, and Seeing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nocturnal_Leanings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nocturnal_Leanings/gifts).



She sees him by accident. Humans are such brief, fragile things, it’s hard to take any notice of them. They are like candles, flickering and spitting and quickly guttering out. 

Easiest to remember are the ones who worship; there are fewer of those, now, and her people are turning into myths and legends before their own eyes. But scattered across the world who keep the old ways, second sons and forgotten daughters who get blown across the seas to new lands.

He not one to worship her people, not is he one to bargain with them. She doubts he’s thought of the Fair Folk at all. But the sounds of his writing scratch at her ears, so Angelica turns to watch him.

He’s still young enough to be called a child, laying on the floor and writing furiously in a journal. His pen comes to the end of one page and immediately starts on another, scratching things out in a human language she does not comprehend. Even as she watches, his hand comes up to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Yes, she can feel the sickness in him, the fever. The same fever that has the woman in the next room laying flat on her back, moaning in pain.

Fair Folk do not make a sound, not if they don’t want to, but when Angelica moves to get a better look at what he’s writing the boy’s head snaps up to stare straight at her.

No, not at her. He can’t possibly. He is staring out the window, not into her realm.

“Help,” the boy whispers. “Help us.” One of his hands rests over his chest, above the heart beating too fast. And Angelica reaches out, for just a moment, and puts a hand on his chest as well. Feels his heart, sure and strong and full of life even as it struggles against the fever that is starting to take him.

Angelica turns away. Fair Folk are not moved by humans, and this boy’s mortality does not interest her. Humans are too delicate, too brief, and she will not bargain with children.

When she meets him again she learns the woman in that room was his mother, and the fever carried her off. Angelica reminds herself there was nothing to be done. Fair Folk do not bargain with children, and they do not give gifts freely.

The moment of her hand on him is forgotten. If it was a gift, it was unconscious. She was curious, that’s all. He always made her curious. She doesn’t keep track of him. Why should she? One boy, with fever and a furious desire to live. There are a hundred like him, a thousand.

* * * 

The next time she sees him, he’s at war. Angelica’s people are everywhere now, drawn to the noise and a light and the desperation in men’s hearts. One young man makes a bargain, sells his soul to have her people ride beside his army. His smug smile turns into a screech as the Fair Folk rampage through the British and American alike, snuffing out their lives like so many candles.

Her people have always been a sword without a handle: a weapon, but as dangerous for the wielder as his victims. 

Still, as the days pass Angelica grows bored with the fighting. Her people begin to leave, slipping away in search of something more novel. Angelica stays, though she doesn’t know why, watching the armies bed down for what will be a frighteningly cold winter. She watches their plays, their dry and meager food, their drills and formations. It does not interest her.

He does. She sees him leaving on a mission, reconnaissance down the river beyond enemy lines. The man she had known as a boy gives his orders in a quiet voice, creeping away from their raft and into the trees.

She thinks about going to him, offering a bargain (Maybe he would like to see the Fae fight) but before she can a British soldier steps out at the wrong moment and catches them. The men spring into action, trying to retreat. Bang bang, go the guns, little pops of light and noise that sparkle in her vision.

They make it to the boat, but even Angelica can see that it won’t work. She sucks in a breath as her man is shot once, twice, and topples out of the raft into the freezing water. 

He rolls and fights in the strong current, blood pouring out into the water. Angelica can feel his fear, feel the panic that flutters in him as he tries to battle his way to the surface. It’s no use; one of his arms no longer works. He sinks, eyes fluttering, body spasming as the water hits his lungs. Humans are not meant to breath water.

Just before his heart stops, she sinks a hand into his chest. Angelica grabs the part of him that burns, that pulses with life and meaning, and lifts. She leaves his body on the shore, and takes his soul with her.

* * * 

He wakes with the sun. Groggy, his body no doubt adjusting to its new surroundings. She gives him time, sitting beside him on the grass. Here, she has nothing but time, stretching on and on and on.

As she watches him slowly start to stir, Angelica can’t help but look him over. He’s skinny and wiry, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. Quickly, before he wakes, she reaches out to stroke the length of his hair. It’s soft, running through her fingers like water.

“Your hair is very beautiful,” she murmurs to the man. “Will you make a gift of it to me?”

“What?” He pulls away from her, still laden with sleep. “Who…”

She stands. “I am Angelica.” No need for a last name; here, she has none.

“Alexander,” He murmurs back, a reflex. “Where am I? How…”

Clearly, it comes to him in a rush. His hand lurches out to his shoulder, now healed of its wound. Then to his lungs, whole and untouched by water. His clothes are still wet, and bloody, but there is nothing she can do about those. Not unless he asks.

“The battle-“ Alexander starts, and Angelica hushes him. She wants to remember this moment; the man she took from the human world, waking and learning of his salvation. Many of her people have companions, human souls who ride beside them until they wither away. She has always walked the earth alone.

“You would look handsome in white and gold,” she tells him, hoping that he will get the hint and ask her for an outfit. He does not.

“The battle, where is the battle? Did you save me? Where are we?”

She waves a hand. “Elsewhere.”

“Schuylkill? Philadelphia?”

“No.” Is he stupid, or injured in the head? “Elsewhere. I took you.”

He looks around, clearly startled by his surroundings. They are in a grassy meadow, or perhaps nestled in the branches of a huge tree. It doesn’t matter. It is warm, pleasantly so, though she sees Alexander shiver.

"Where..." He whips around, staring at her. "What are you?"

"Many people call us the Fair Folk," Angelica says absently. She reaches out to stroke his hair again, but Alexander jerks back as if stung. "I really do like your hair."

"Thank you, but it's mine." He wraps one hand around his ponytail, pressing it flat against his skull.

"Well. _You_ are mine, so therefore your hair should be too... but I will let you keep it. Do you have a last name, Alexander?"

Her tone is pleasant, courteous, exactly how humans prefer things. Evidently not this human, because Alexander's frown only deepens. "Hamilton. Son of James Hamilton. What do you mean, I am yours?"

She shrugs, waves a hand around. "I took your soul, there on the battlefield. You will stay here with me for as long as your soul endures, hunting and riding and sitting by the sea." He will lay with his head in her lap, she decides, and she would stroke his hair. Pets are not something her people have, beyond the humans they take, and the idea is briefly exciting. "It will be a long time," she reassures Alexander, trying to placate the look of horror that has appeared on his face. "Longer than a human life, I think. There have been humans who have lived hundreds of years, in this realm."

He stares at her a long moment. Is he pleased? In awe? Trying to even comprehend the gift she had given him? Maybe it is too much for his human mind, bright as it was. She smiles at him.

Alexander opens his mouth. Then he shuts it. When he opens it again the words pour out, low and angry.

" _You put my soul back!_ "

"What?" Of all the things she was expecting of a human, it was not this.

"You took it, right?" He stands, then sways as a wave of dizziness shakes him and the surroundings flicker once again. A mound of dirt, a copse of stone trees... "You took my soul, right? In your hands. Take those hands and put it back in my body."

His body, dying on the shores of the Schuylkill? "No," Angelica protests, still too surprised to put up too much of a fuss. "You were dying. I saved your life."

"I don't care." He growls the words. "It's my body. My soul. My _life_. And I want it back. You have no right to take it from me."

_That_ she can comprehend. Angelica draws herself up to full height. "I claim your soul as my right. I took it, and you will ride with me forevermore."

Alexander draws himself up too, straightening his spine and throwing back his shoulders. "I protest. I did not consent to this."

"But you did," Angelica reminds him. A chill goes through her. "'Help us', you said."

"What?" He glares at her.

"You were a child, with fever. I-" _put a hand to your breast, and felt the power within. I gave you life_. "-I helped." 

"You didn't." He tears away. "No one helped. It was by the grace of God I survived and- and my mother did not."

"She was your mother," Angelica nods in understanding. "A sad thing. Now come." She turns, leading the way, and when he resists she sends a burst of power to make him follow. He still belongs to her, his soul is in her possession. 

When he falls into step beside her he is cursing, spitting. "Release me."

"Why would I do that?" She waves a hand around. "This is to be your home, a long life in my service. Why would you not want to stay?"

"Because there's a war going on!" He spat out. "A whole life to return to. They need me."

Humans and their petty wars does not interest her. "I could make you be happy here." She says it casually, not looking at him, though hyper aware of every reaction.

He shivers, once, then his jaw sets. "No," Alexander says, and it is quiet and sure. "You can not."

It makes her hesitate, but she still pushes on. He is _hers_ "None of that is reason to release you, back into a damaged body and the dangers of war."

"As to that-" and, turning towards him, she sees a brief flash of smile, "your people are rather fond of games, are they not?"

* * *

She lets him name the game, as is only fair. One by one he is presented with games: cards, dice, trictrac, to each he shook his head. Finally he says “My lady, these are all games you know well. I will stand on my mind and my words, as I always have. Ask me any question of logic or reason, and you shall have an answer.”

Angelica smiles. “A riddle then, for your soul. Answer once, and only once. Correctly, and you are returned to your body, whole and unharmed. Incorrectly, and you will stay here as my companion and the first of my riders.”

She holds out a hand. After a long moment’s silence, Alexander takes it. “Agreed.”

Angelica’s voice chirps, bright as the sun, as she says

“My home is not quiet but I am not loud.   
The lord has meant us to journey together.   
I am faster than he and sometimes stronger,   
But he keeps on going for longer.   
Sometimes I rest but he runs on.   
For as long as I am alive I live in him.   
If we part from one another   
It is I who will die.”

Alexander repeats it back to her, and she nods. 

Then, silence. 

"Well?" She prompts him.

Alexander raised an eyebrow. "Nothing in our bargain said I had to answer immediately. In fact, I would consider that to be against the spirit of our bargain."

Angelica considers him; bold, bright, standing with a stubborn set to his jaw and a tension in his legs. _He thinks I will refuse him._ She won't: Fae do not alter bargains. "Come by the water, then," she says. 

This time, she does not force him. And this time, he follows. Down to the swelling of a huge sea that doesn’t look quite like water. They sit together there, watching the horizon.

“What are your people fighting for?” Angelica asks him, after a time.

He turns to look at her. “You don’t know?”

She shakes her head. “When I am like this, human concerns are… distant. You fight for freedom, yes?”

“Yes.”

“They always fight for freedom.” She touches him, just above the heart, where she’s rested her hand years ago. His heart still beats, loud and strong. “What do you really fight for? A people fight for freedom, yes, but each man fights for something else.”

A pause. “Potential,” Alexander says carefully. “To be something more than I was. To be what I was intended to be.”

She thinks about that, the concept of potential. What it would feel like to want to be something, and to not be able to achieve it. 

“And you, my lady?” Alexander asks her. 

She tilts her head, an unspoken question.

“What do you fight for?” The soft hair is falling in his eyes, glinting in the bright light. Everything is bright here, always bright.

She might have said, _For my people_ , or, _Whatever I please_ or, truly, _I fight for what interests at the time, even if I know it won’t interest me for long._ Instead she says, “What people ask of me.” 

“Oh?”

“People make bargains, for our help. They want this person to die, or that battle to be won, or this family to suffer. They offer an exchange.”

“And what do they offer?” He asks.

“Bread or cream is traditional. Gold, for larger exchanges. Their own souls, or children to take with us and raise here.” She watches his face, and it does not change. “This does not scare you.”

“I have seen such things before.” His eyes run over her once, evaluating. Probably noting her lack of gold, souls, or children. “This doesn’t make you happy.”

How can he know? So quickly? “No. Nothing ever…” She stops, collects herself, and then reconsiders. He is already hers, what is the harm? He’s given her his name, and she has taken his soul. “Nothing satisfies. Not for long.”

And he smiles. “I know that feeling. Never being satisfied.”

* * *

She gets him bread and fruit, as a courtesy. Humans need to eat, after all, and after a war he may even feel hungry. He won’t touch it.

“You should eat,” she tries. “Humans eat.”

His chin juts out. “Legends say that to accept food or drink from your people would bind me to this world forever. I will _not_ be bound, my lady. I will return to the war.”

It makes her laugh. He flinches from the sight. “I have claimed your soul. You _are_ bound to this realm, regardless of what you eat.”

Alexander flushes, but she doesn’t understand it as anger until he picks up her food and flings it into the sea. “Then you will kill me. I would rather die.”

Her hands heat up, itching to seek revenge for this insult. She will throw fire and him, set his beautiful black hair aflame, and he will learn not to insult her gifts again.

Alexander stands in front of her, resolute. He does not flinch, not even when the flames lick up her wrist in preparation to strike. “I would rather die than stay here. And I believe, my lady, that you feel the same. You don’t want me to stay here. You want to be human. To want, and seek, and _try_.”

He is wrong. Absolutely, irrevocably wrong. She has lived a hundred human lives, a thousand, and yet-

The wanting. The seeking. Always different, in every life, and always powerful. She has been beggars and queens, warriors and mothers, and each had wanted. 

He is right. She stares at him for a long moment. Her hands return to normal hands, her body slumps. 

“A fish.” Alexander says finally. “A fish in a river, that journeys in its home and dies without it, though the river runs on.That is the answer to your riddle.”

It is.

“You took a human soul,” Alexander says, “And humans want. Take me back to my war.”

As she leaves him, on the shores of the Schuylkill River, she breathes life back into his body. Bullet holes knit closed before her eyes, air is sucked into sodden lungs, and Alexander's eyes flutter open. He has lost a day, no more. He will make it back to his camp, she knows, with an excellent story of feigning death to avoid capture by enemy soldiers. His friends, who have given him up for lost, will rejoice.

* * * 

Through sheer stubbornness, America begins to turn the tide of the war. Alexander, flush with success, attends the winter's ball with all other eligible young men. He meets Angelica there.

She does not know him, not like this. Her thoughts are of most ordinary things - the course of the war, her father's place in it, her sisters wanting to find husbands among the dashing soldiers that ask them to dance. How bored she is, and how much she wants to have a conversation with someone who can keep up with her mind. How much she wants to follow in her father’s footsteps, to make a real change in the world. 

When Alexander walks in, her breath catches. She knows, somehow, of how intelligent he is, how hungry and ambitious. Their eyes meet for just a moment, and then he crosses the room.

"You strike me as a woman who has never been satisfied." 

The words, a double edged sword, cut her. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean, you forget yourself." It’s the correct thing to say. A rebuke for his daring, even as she lingers.

“You’re like me-” and his eyes meet hers, setting her aflame, for they are dark and deep and filled with unspilled secrets- “I’m never satisfied.”

And she is ready to dance with him. “Is that right?”


End file.
